


Side-effects 2

by ZukoRocks30



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hogwarts, Potions, The Burrow, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZukoRocks30/pseuds/ZukoRocks30
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape's potions are at it again!  This time, Arthur Weasley must continue to combat Nagini's venom with an extensive potions regimen, and he experiences an all-too-familiar side-effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side-effects 2

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other characters found in the Harry Potter Universe. They belong to J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers. I merely enjoy borrowing and using them for my own enjoyment! I make no money from this story.

Arthur Weasley had never been a slim wizard.  Even as a child, he had seemed to gravitate towards being more sturdy and stocky than his brothers.  Part of that may have been he was always more of a home-body, preferring to be indoors and reading, particularly muggle-generated literature his father was always bringing home from his job in the Ministry's Wizard-Muggle Liaison Office.  Part of it may also have been his love of his mother's cooking.  Brenna Weasley nee O'Leary had brought her love of her beloved Ireland with her when she married his father Edward, including her love of Irish food.  Arthur always had second or third helpings when his mother cooked her famous Irish dishes, including corned beef and cabbage, Shepherd's pie, and lamb stew with potatoes.  And, of course, his mother made those dishes often!  It was easy to continue the pattern of overindulgence when he married his Hogwarts sweetheart, Molly Prewett, who could cook a meal, even an Irish meal, good enough to rival his mother's.

However, everything began to change when his youngest son Ronald started Hogwarts.  Harry Potter entered all their lives for the second time, and when the fear of Lord Voldemort returning became a real and palpable thing, Arthur's penchant for eating tapered off.  Nerves and worry ate at his gut, and he found he had little appetite.  His usually healthy appetite virtually disappeared at the end of Ron's fourth year.  Harry Potter returned from the third task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament with Cedric Diggory's dead body, proclaiming that he'd seen Voldemort.  The Dark wizard had returned, and the Evil that every Light wizard had feared the most had become real once more.

Molly began chiding him to no end when his sons, particularly Ron, began eating circles around him.  However, there wasn't much Arthur could do.  His appetite, even for his beloved Irish fare, was practically non-existent.

Then came that horrible Christmas when Arthur stood guard at the entrance to the Department of Mysteries in the bowels of the Ministry.  Nothing could have prepared him for the sudden attack by Voldemort's huge, venomous snake, Nagini.  As Arthur had lain on the floor in terrible pain, bleeding profusely, with his breathing getting shallow, his life had literally flashed before his eyes.  He thought for sure that he would die.  Tears fell from his eyes at not being able to see his children grow up into the strong, sturdy, wonderful people he knew they would be.  He craved one last kiss and cuddle with his dear Mollywobbles.  She had stuck by him through thick and through thin—granted, most of their marriage had been thin on coin, but thick on love.  He himself had certainly been much thicker of body early on in their marriage, when Molly would cook up enough food for six people, even though it was just the two of them.  Arthur had learned to gladly eat as much as he could to keep Molly happy.

Arthur felt forever in Harry Potter's debt that Christmas, as the boy had somehow “seen” his attack and allowed him to get help relatively quickly.  Granted, it was agony when all the potions and traditional magical treatments of snake bites did nothing to his wounds.  However, Arthur had no fuss in trying the muggle “stitches” remedy, which seemed to work for a time.  Muggles truly were fascinating in how they managed to do so much without the use of magic to make their lives easier!  However, even the muggle stitches failed.  It was only a special potion concocted by Hogwarts' Potions Master Severus Snape, where the base actually included a small amount of Nagini's venom (no one asked how Snape came by that ingredient), that finally seemed to work at closing and healing the nasty wounds.

When Arthur finally got to go home, his wounds had at long last scabbed over; however, he had to be on a constant potions regimen to keep fighting the venom that for some reason would not leave his system.  Snape graciously provided the potion he had to drink every morning and every evening, without fail, to continue to neutralize the snake toxins still lingering in his blood.  Whether a result of the poison or a side-effect of the potion, Arthur found that he had overall less energy and easily became winded when even walking a short ways.  His skin itched periodically, and only a bath with soothing salts seemed to help.  However, the largest side-effect that Arthur noticed was his appetite:  while it had been virtually non-existent before Nagini's attack, Arthur now found himself craving food at almost all times during the day and when he woke up from nightmares at night.  His stomach growled particularly loudly right after he took his morning and evening potion, resulting in Molly proudly cooking up a storm for him.  And Arthur would gladly eat everything that was placed in front of him.  For some reason, food even seemed to taste better, particularly his beloved Irish fare.  He relished the various textures sliding across his tongue.  He moaned around tender cuts of lamb, sharp, pungent cheeses, and bitter Irish ale.  Every mouthful was delicious and delectable.

It wasn't long before he found himself loosening his belt halfway through meals.  Then, not wearing a belt at all, for his pants certainly didn't need it to stay up.  Eventually, his pants felt tight, and a bit more skin than usual rolled over the top of his waistband.  When this happened, he took his pants shamefully to his wife, who merely looked at him with love, kissed him squarely on his mouth, and did a few hemming and threading charms to make them a bit larger and looser on his rapidly expanding frame.

Not that their love life suffered at all.  Molly had bemoaned his thinner body over the last couple of years, saying that she had relished his previously stockier frame against her own well-padded figure.  Arthur had always appreciated Molly's ample and full curves.  Apparently, great minds think alike.  As Arthur began to quickly put back on the pounds he had lost and then some, he found Molly giving him more ardent looks over breakfast, squeezing his not-quite-so-bony knee at lunch, leaning over his thicker arm to put another heaping spoonful of food on his plate at supper, letting her generous bosom brush against said arm.  She would lead him to their bedroom after dinner, where she would unbutton his shirt and pants to let his full, round, bloated belly out of his constricting clothing and begin a gentle rubbing and kneading to encourage his digestion.  Needless to say, such wonderful ministrations led to other delightful activities.  If it weren't for the fact that Molly had her tubes magically tied after they had Ginny, Arthur would wonder if all their recent activity would see him a father for an eighth time, such was the frequency of their unions these days.  It reminded him of when they were newlyweds and they couldn't get enough of each other, carried away as they were by passion and fullness and love.

When the snake's poison was deemed out of his system and he was gradually weaned off the potions regimen, Arthur had found that his appetite had stayed the same, despite the fact the other lingering effects (the tiredness and windedness, etc.) had disappeared.  Not that he or Molly were complaining.  He would merely smile as his stomach growled, rub a hand on his increasingly larger and rounder belly, and ask Molly what she had prepared for him to eat.  She would smile back, rub a hand along the straining shirt covering his belly, and tell him to sit down, lean back, and let her do all the work.

Arthur may never have been a slim or wealthy wizard.  But in everything in life that mattered—family, food, companionship, passion, love—he was rich and full and fat.  And with the glances Molly was throwing at him over her shoulder as she whipped up a very large portion of Shepherd's pie, Arthur knew that that fullness would never end.  



End file.
